So, you want to know about me? Wow... If you're looking for the promised author notes, look below the line. Those are much more interesting.

I like video games. A lot. Specifically, I'm a big fan of the Halo series (yes, even the 343i ones). I also enjoy reading, and like to make poorly drawn sketches on occasion.

What drew me here, though, was that I was always considering "what if" scenarios. Specifically, crossovers. I always wondered what it'd be like if two different things with some sort of commonality interacted. (Think Halo and Mass Effect. Both involve aliens, space travel, ancient precursor species, AI, etc. but both deal with them in completely different ways.) I got bored one day and decided to check something out. The amazing wealth of quality writing I found made me stick around. I got hooked.

Now, it seems that I'm writing things. It's fun. However, I do have one request. To reiterate what I've said before, please, if you're going to criticize me, make it constructive or at the very least valid. I have little experience writing fiction, but I'll keep trying to improve, so long as you keep giving me ideas on how to improve, and refrain from just ending the conversation with "You suck." Can we all be courteous? Awesome.

If you're looking for the Author's Notes for my new story, Prodromos, then they're right here. If you're not, keep scrolling.

Chapter 1:

Where this fits: I imagine many of you who not only read the story but then decided to look at the promised author's notes will already have a somewhat blurry idea where this fits into the overall Halo canon. Some of you might not be familiar with Fractures, and others might have never heard the name "Bornstellar" before, so I'm gonna rectify that briefly.

If you've never read the Forerunner Trilogy by Greg Bear, go do it. Good novels, hard sci-fi. Very confusing on the first read through, but still fascinating and incredibly informative about the Forerunners...since it's written from their perspective. Specifically, the perspective of Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting, a young forerunner who would awaken and be mentored by the Didact, basically the Forerunner's military commander. Forerunner apprenticeships end with a mutation where the mentor's genes are imprinted upon the apprentice, and the Didact went a bit further. Bornstellar got his mentor's genetic code, memories, etcetera, basically becoming a second Didact. He would later be the Didact referred to in the Halo 3 terminals that activated the Halo Array, while the original would be thought lost, would be captured and driven insane by the Flood, and after returning and composing the Librarian's human test subjects by force, she would lock him away to meditate, where he would be found in Halo 4 (having not medidated, but instead spent 100,000 years stewing in his anger). The Forerunner empire would crumble due to the Flood, the rings would fire, and almost everything died. The Forerunners had enacted a conservation measure to reseed the galaxy with life, and a few of them, including Bornstellar (aka the IsoDidact) would survive as well (as it turns out, Shield Worlds and the Ark actually did their job).

If you never read Halo: Fractures, I also recommend it. It's a short story collection, and it's a good one. One of them elaborates on what happened after the rings fired. without too many spoilers, The few remaining Forerunners decide they should no longer inhabit the milky way, and must atone for their crime of killing literally everything in the galaxy. It ends as they leave.

Except it doesn't. At the very end of the book is an untitled continuation of the story, set a few centuries later. It is written from Bornstellar's perspective, and tells about how he and the other remaining forerunners dispersed themselves among the stars of a new, unidentified galaxy. How he and his wife found themselves a moon in orbit around a massive gas giant that had red seas and breezes that smelled of lavender. it told about how the family abandoned their technology to live a noble, but finite, life before fading away, and how the pair built themselves a farmstead and had a son, who at the age of eight could control the blue herd animals they used to plow the fields. And it told how the family would sit together at night, Bornstellar telling his son tales of the past that, for the moment, the son thought were fantasies, tales of space battles and Halo rings. It was a bittersweet ending to the tale of the Forerunners, perhaps the best that could be expected for them, given the tragedy of their situation.

This is Not your Tomb: And that's where the idea for this story started to take root. I essentially started thinking about that unnamed son, a seeming throwaway character to create a happy family for the end of the book. I thought about what it would be like for him growing up. Would a child raised on tales of the impossible (and then finding out they had really happened) be content to live a quiet life of farming? would he be willing to wait it out when his parents eventually died and he was stuck completely alone in the middle of nowhere? I wouldn't be, and I figured he deserved a better fate than to be born simply to die. I imagined he wouldn't be the only one to think that, even among the generation that travelled with Bornstellar. Every forerunner was not necessarily so noble or so defeated. It was never specified how many actually made the trip, just that they were few. Considering they once numbered in the billions or maybe trillions, a group of 100 or fewer refugees seemed like a good number to preserve the tiny group size while also meaning there could be an actual town or something, a community. And it was never specified where they went, just that it was a different galaxy, far away. Andromeda is our closest galaxy, but it's still very far, and we're talking about a handful of salvaged or rescued ships, not a pristine armada. Forerunner ships are fast, but not instantaneous, and some of these might not be the most reliable. Andromeda seems like a likely enough choice. All that was left was to make them meet the Andromeda Initiative. That would mean roughly 100,000 years of waiting...and there's only a 100 of them. Without their life-sustaining armor, they won't last that long. The entirety of human society in real life has existed for 5 or 6 thousand years. The species has existed for 200,000 years. No matter how I fudged the numbers, that was going to be a problem. But these are forerunners. We know they have control over slipspace and space-time therein. We've seen it with their stasis pods on Onyx, and again with the same sort of thing on the various vessels that brought the remaning living organisms back home once the halos fired. It wasn't ridiculous to suggest a lifeworker transport was a ship used to embark on the journey, or that the forerunners would be wise enough to realize that they were on borrowed time and their efforts at not being forgotten and dying out would be for naught without some assistance. And thus, the framework for this story was created. From there, I was able to start weaving in elements of the Andromeda plot to catalyze the events of the first chapter. Andromeda seemed to emphasize that the Initiative was a second chance for a lot of people, so it seemed fitting that it would be for the Forerunners, too

Yes, I am aware that there's the whole issue of "They're separate universes, unless this is an AU fic"...I'm not going there because spoilers.

This Glittering Band: A bit of background characterization:

Ryder in this story is going to be like a player character who primarily chooses the casual (spiral shape) conversation options, with a bit of logical (Gear shape) thrown in, because that's how I played him and it seemed to fit very well, not to mention was very funny.

The three squadmates in this first chapter were chosen because I chose them the most frequently in my playthrough, but I will make sure the others are equally included.

The three younger forerunners introduced are, I like to think, somewhat representative of three general schools of thought in the village about re-entering a galactic community. Dawn is a traditionalist, distrustful of newcomers (or in the case of humanity, the species they were at war with for a thousand years). Stars is the opposite, completely irreverent of tradition. Tides is somewhere in the middle, respecting tradition but not where it led her ancestors. Now, viewpoints would by nature likely be more nuanced and refined than that, but that's the basics in a traditional mass effect red/blue/green choice format

the Fist Councilor has a...complex past, but that's all I will say for now. Same with the other councilor, who I am temporarily calling the Second Councilor because I'm terrible with names, especially when the names are sentences.

I think I had more to say, but I've forgotten. If I remember, I'll update this. For now, though, I'd just like to thank everyone for the support. I didn't imagine this story would be quite so successful in this amount of time, so thank you, really. Even just for reading it. I'll do my best to keep living up to expectations.

Now, if you're here for the notes for my first story, you're in the correct section. Where'd everything go? If you've seen my profile page before, you'd be expecting a wall of text about the story to scroll through...alas, I could no longer handle it. At latest count, it was around 13000 words...which would compete with my longest chapters. I've got it all saved in a document, so feel free to message me if for some reason you want to know what I said for a specific part of chapters 1-15. Below will be the notes for chapter 16 and on.

Chapter 16:

Some Brief Notes:Just a few things I wanted to cover before I get going on this chapter specifically. Mainly, I've been looking at how I portray combat in this series. It has always been my goal to follow a sort of middle ground. There may be pegasi and giant rabbits and people backflipping everywhere, but I still want to acknowledge the basic principles of armed medieval combat. The problem there is I don't really know all that much. So I've been doing research, learning what I can and trying to apply it without ruining the "fun" of Fire Emblem combat. So if you happen to know about swordplay and think I've made a bunch of stupid mistakes, yeah, probably I have. shoot me a message to let me know how I can do better. For example, I have found that the crossed-swords block that Aiden has done on occasion is actually a pretty terrible idea, since your opponent can apply leverage to both weapons at once. Apparently, more realistic dual-wielding would incorporate simultaneous strikes and counterstrikes, allowing for both defense and attack, with a general stance similar, in fact, to what is portrayed in Fates to prevent you tangling your weapons and looking like an idiot. Just chalk up any stupid moves to the fact that Aiden, despite appearances, is by no means a master and that his opponents are even less familiar with his style...except for Yen'fay. That was just the element of surprise.

There was more, but it has since disappeared from my mind.

Ships and shipping: You may have noticed that there was a lot of ships in this chapter, and I don't mean the kind that floats on the ocean (though to be fair, those were there in abundance as well...it's been a common theme for the past few chapters. I might have a problem). Why, you ask? Well, I'll get to that in a paragraph or so. But suffice to say that it's mostly coming to light now because I didn't want to bore people buy repeating verbatim most of the support conversations that led to this point, so it all happened off-screen unless it came up during the story of one of the main characters (i.e. Panne and Frederick and their relation to Cainne, though you may notice most of that A-S conversation was not in here anyway).

As a follow up, if you're wondering what the hell I based my pairing decisions off of, it was based on the actual playthrough of the game I've sunk over 300 hours into. A few were created before I even knew about the certain spoiler-filled mechanic that was influenced by pairing choices, and so many were based off of amusing or heartfelt dialogue. Others were based on stats, or some combination of the two. Some were even "I have units left over, who goes with who? Ah, hell, I don't know anymore." However, do not take this to mean anything it doesn't. This was all done for some very specific reasons (a few of which are on course to show up very soon). No shipping wars are necessary, please. If you don't like it, remember that the story is based on the premise of multiple universes. Just pretend your one true pairing is in one of those others, somewhere.

The purpose of this chapter: Now, onto the why of this all coming about now. Besides it fitting the timeline rather well, I introduced all of this information on one chapter. This chapter in-game is yet another "go here, kill enemy" which has some relevance to the plot but really nothing interesting about it. So I took the opportunity instead to make this chapter about reintroducing the Shepherds and seeing how they've been doing for the two years we spent looking solely at about...8 characters, I think. They've been doing things, acquiring new skills, etcetera, etcetera. And though I really had no interest of devoting an essay to each individual's actions during the interlude, it would have been negligent to pretend nothing at all happened, especially considering their returning prominence to the plot as we continue on the trail of the game.

Long live the king! Now, I hope no one has the wrong idea here. I don't want to give the impression that the Chrom of this story has been wrapped around the finger of his bride and has lost all control. I always saw their relationship as relatively healthy, with the one caveat that Sumia (or really anyone who was paired with him) is sometimes able to reign in Chrom when he's acting particularly boorish. He has his heart in the right place, it's just that sometimes his head isn't...also, the game developers couldn't justify the player losing a potentially vital character halfway through the game, but that's neither here nor there.

Everyone's so...happy: Does it seem like this chapter is oddly cheerful, considering the last few? Well, I'd been thinking about that while I wrote, and I stand by it. First of all, I wanted to portray the Shepherds as the sort of dysfunctional but close-knit family they always seemed to me to be. For them, this is a reunion with friends that have (in the case of non Ylisseans who may have gone away to do their own thing) been gone for years, or (in the case of the four OCs) a solid month. Even the ones who were in the same general area spatially were probably occupied by other things. Sure, a war is on, and it's serious, but at this point, they aren't really sure how serious. And more importantly, they're likely really glad to see everyone.

Especially in the case of the four returning from Valm, this is a crucial point. They've had a rough time recently. But after a few weeks at sea doing nothing and having time to reflect, they get to see all the old comrades and friends who they've been missing. That is likely to be quite cheering. And with the fact that there is the whole war thing going on, some have probably made the conscious or unconscious decision not to dwell on things and focus on the current moment.

However, that's not to say it is out of their minds. Lyta, especially, hasn't let it go, and she is dwelling on it.

Enter the Vaike: Have I mentioned that I really regret not using Gregor or Vaike more? I really like their characters, but I never really utilized them. I've been trying to atone for this throughout the story, and I gave Vaike a bit of a moment here as a result.

Combat: I'm relatively certain I need to work on my combat scenes, especially with large fights like this. Am I wrong? What do you think? I've been almost unconsciously keeping the general fighting shortened to focus on more important duels or non-combat events, but is that just hurting it further? Should I try to expand on the combat scenes?

The Battle: Interesting fact about the actual battle occurring in this chapter...when I was initially envisioning this in my head, I specifically remembered the snow and the gray skies from the battlemap, and that shaped my image of the whole region. I imagined something not too dissimilar from Alaska, especially given Port Ferox's geographic location. As such, the skies are gray, it's foggy, and the shoreline is rocky and jagged. Form there, it became easy to see why a fishing village would be important for an invader: it's a place to safely disembark your troops. It all made sense...and then I looked at the in-game script and found out that the dialogue suggests that the town was destroyed. So what is portrayed in the chapter is a two-stage assault. The first was meant to do exactly as I imagined, taking the town over from an unprepared enemy. The second, however, was planned with the knowledge that the Shepherds and the Feroxi army are defending: all-out assault and destruction, therefore achieving both some rationale behind Walhart's plans and matching what the game says happened to the town and Basilio's army.

Chapter 17:

More Miscellaneous: So I realized that I've been spelling Ragna Ferox wrong this entire time. It's actually Regna Ferox. I feel stupid. Oh well, too late to change it.

Oops!: For the maybe four of you who might have read the chapter as it was posted, sorry! I posted the non-edited version by accident. It's fixed now.

Time Travel, I guess?: I've been trying my best to avoid anachronisms, aka stupid nonsensical references that we all understand but which make no sense in context. If I said that Martin checked his watch, for example, that would be an anachronism since Martin lives in a medieval culture which doesn't have watches.

The actual official game, however, does not help. I at one point almost mentioned genetics. Then I caught myself and changed it. Then, while listening to some soundtrack music (it helps me get in the right mindset while writing this stuff), I saw a youtube comment that mentioned one of Nah's supports. On a whim, I looked the supports up, and you know what I found? at one point, she explicitly references genetics. Yes, somehow the culture that fights with swords and barely understands gravity has a deep enough knowledge of advanced bioscience that a girl raised by a hateful foster family in a war-ravaged world understands genetics and heredity. What?

Spoiler Alert: Seriously. If you haven't read chapter 17, don't read this first!

Some major stuff happened in this chapter. Certain revelations and plot events I've been sitting on since the story was conceptualized, so I'm happy to finally get them out there.

It was Inevitable, really: So the infiltration and then eventual trusting of a shadowy evil organization backfires? Who would've guessed? But yes, it was bound to happen. And it makes sense. Slipping under the radar of a god who seems to know everything and has taken a specific interest in people like you was unlikely. The Grimleal knew from the start who Aiden was, but remember...Grima had already expressed interest in keeping the time travelers around, for some reason. Aiden was a tool for the cult, and now things have changed. It's a miracle that he's still alive. And yes, he owes someone for that.

Family ties, part 1: So Cainne and Aiden are siblings? Who knew?...besides me, of course. Did I fool anyone into thinking they had, shall I say, reached an S support? Functionally, that's actually similar to what I imagined was the bond between them. As siblings they would be close, but they were twins. And this being a fictional story about time travel and dragons, bringing the classic concept of "twin telepathy" into play seemed natural. No, I don't mean they can actually read each other's thoughts, just that they're very close, able to anticipate one another's actions to a degree from prior experience. In addition, you may have noticed (or I may have said) that names in this story are often chosen with a purpose. Cainne and Aiden, to me, is reminiscent of Cain and Abel. Now, I had the biblical story in mind when I did this, but I later discovered there was a cavalier duo in an older game who shared that name. They were the origin of the archetype that Sully and Stahl, as well as oddly Kaze and Saizo, fall into. One is tinted red, the other is tinted green. One is more serious, the other is laid back. And what do you know? Aiden and Canne respectively use a sword and lance (and, you know, a beaststone, but forget that), the weapons that Awakening cavaliers use...they also have a weakness to beast-killing weapons. Cainne and Aiden don't follow the color tradition, but when a pair of Ninja fall into the archetype, I figure some variation is fine. I'll let you discover who is the laid back one.

Regarding the revelation that they're mixed blood, well, I'm hoping that made sense with the later revelation.

Family ties, part 2: We've seen the revelation of Robin and Lucina's parentages in game, of course. as with many in-game scenes, my goal was to view it from a new angle, such as that of the villain himself. The most interesting, as usual, was Lucina. I feel I've made my thoughts on the character apparent enough in prior notes and chapters, so I won't ramble on.

Family ties, part 3: Robin and Lucina's conversation was my way at poking fun at how Awakening handles these future children. Realistically, it's a very strange thing to have happen, especially for but not limited to the parents of said children. It's fortunate (and by fortunate I mean hard-coded) that they only appear after the parents are together...it'd sure be awkward if they weren't. I plan on exploring this a bit as time goes on, from the perspective of these normal men and women who suddenly find themselves dealing with surreal time-travel nonsense. I hope you all chuckle as much as I do.

Speaking of which, do you know how hard it is to figure out realistic traveling for this? The game overworld allows for the player to jump from a war in Valm to some fortress on the complete opposite side of the Ylissean continent with little trouble, but that's not really probable if you're going for slightly more realism...I've figured it out, but be aware I may sometimes stretch your suspension of disbelief in my effort to bring these characters into the fold.

Also, Robin talking about his age was in reference to the player avatar. I've always operated this story using the base avatar, but only recently considered what that meant. You look at him (or her), and he doesn't seem that old. Sure, there's an option for an even younger model and an even older one, but the base model isn't all that old. He's very clearly a young adult, while Chrom and some of the other shepherds are more aged (though not really by much). If I were to put it on a scale, Characters like Ricken and Donnel would be on the same end as the young avatar model, then the future children (who are essentially late-stage teenagers for the most, so it seems, with the base model close by in the middle, followed by many of the shepherds like Chrom and the more adult avatar model, and then some more aged individuals like Frederick, Emmeryn, and Panne, who always seemed to me to be slightly older than their peers but not by much. At the far end of this scale are the manaketes, but they're not really relevant and sort of skew the distribution...If you're curious where the protagonists fall, it's generally around the same age as the Shepherds or the base avatar model.

Family ties, part 4: Which makes it somewhat awkward that they're the descendants of the future children, seeing as they're physically older than their so-called parents. Time travel is wonky, guys. As you might expect, I'll explain the more specific circumstances of this plenty in the future, but now you at least know. These characters are not simply random time travelers. There's a reason behind who they are and what they do. I have carefully based who the character is, their backstory, what they know, and what they can do on certain pairings of the future children (from the same game the adult pairings were from. I s-supported as many characters as possible for that sweet, sweet double attacking.) I've laid out hints as to their identity through the previous chapters and through the characters themselves. With this in mind, maybe you'll look at them in a slightly different light.

But wait, you call out! With the events of fates, some of the future children actually have canon offspring! Well, I had started with this idea in my head before Fates was a thing, let alone before I knew that some Awakening Characters would appear and have children characters. I might end up addressing that specifically, but for now, consider this: Awakening offspring are based on the mother (i.e., Olivia will always have Inigo as a child, no matter who the father is). Fates characters are based on the father (i.e., Laslow will always have Soleil as a daughter). This difference, combined with the whole "different timeline, different rules" is my excuse for the difference.

Allies Again: With this chapter, Aiden breaks his isolation and returns to the fold. By now it's become clear that the characters have a history, so they're by no means strangers. And with the looming threat they face, cooperation was the only option. That's not to say there isn't tension in the group given Aiden's past, but now the rest (and we, by extension) understand part of why he did what he did. As always, more is to come.

That should about cover it for this chapter. A lot of stuff happened, so I might've forgot something. If you've got questions, ask! I'll try to answer them.

Chapter 18:

Rabbits...Just, so Many Rabbits: This chapter focused on the paralogue where Yarne is recruited. As such, it had some pretty heavy emphasis on Taguel characters...I'm starting to hate typing that word.

Do not expect a chapter for every paralogue, but expect a similar level of effort on my end to show what happens. In an ideal world, I'll be able to lump some paralogues or main chapters together. I do this for the sake of not bloating the story with an extra 30 chapters, since it's taken me so long to get to 18. The reason why this one was alone was because certain events within set the stage for the next few chapters, and I couldn't really justify events that might take weeks (in-story) to unfold happening two paragraphs after the events that set them off. Anyway, onto the analysis.

But Seriously, why Rabbits?: If you're wondering why Yarne's chapter was first, there's a simple answer: He is right next to Carrion isle on the in-game map. For some reason, I've considered geography very carefully when planning out events. As you may come to find out, this means I had to occasionally get...creative...with justifications for how the Shepherds wind up going from point A to point B.

Hair: We don't think about hair too much in daily life. It is, honestly, pretty uninteresting. In the Fire Emblem series, though, it means something. So as strange as it is to acknowledge the meaning behind the fuzzy stuff, it would be remiss of me not to do so. So Aiden has a little rant about it. Ancestry has been very important in a few of the games, and I'm sure you can guess by now that it's important in this story, as well. I'm not going to place quite the same level of unspoken significance on hair color that the games do, but I will use it as a tool every now and then...what a weird thing to even think about.

Splitting the Party: I'm not really experienced in the ways of tabletop gaming, but I believe that I heard somewhere that splitting the players is a tricky thing to deal with. Fortunately, this isn't tabletop gaming. So, yes, for now, the Shepherds have been subdivided into groups. Chrom heads one, Robin heads another, and Martin and Lyta leads a third. I can tell you right now that these groups will not all last very long. But for as long as they remain separate, I will be chronicling what happens to each, starting with the next chapter.

The New Kid on the Block: With this chapter, we have our first non-Lucina future child. I personally always liked Yarne as a unit, if not so much as a character. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I particularly disliked the character, it just tended to annoy me that every single support was "I'm scared - I'm less scared - I can try and control my fear now", ad nauseum. But he was still a useful unit to have on the field.

With this story, maybe I can have the chance to develop the character in a way that isn't just fear-no fear until the next support conversation. I mean, given the current cast, I have plenty of opportunity to do so. But to be honest, I really don't want to type the word "Taguel" for a good while after this chapter.

Anna the Reference:

So, here's a whole wall of text about an unimportant detail you probably paid no attention to.

The Anna introduced in this chapter, unless something changes, is not going to be a major character. She likely won't even reappear again. Despite this, there's something fairly significant about her.

I may have alluded in the past to the fact that I had no idea I would actually write any of this down when I first imagined it. I may have also mentioned that it was visiting the Fire Emblem archive that first made me realize that writing the story down was something I could do. In all honesty, the credit goes to one story in particular: Asleep. If you've been to the archive, you've likely at least seen it (and if you haven't been to the archive, how the hell did you find my story). It was, last I checked, at the top of the page if you sort by favorites. It is a fantastic piece of work, one that is far superior to anything I could write even on my best day (also, it hasn't been updated in slightly over a year. My heart hurts thinking about it). And to be clear, I do not want to put myself on anywhere near the level of that piece of writing. But for some reason, reading it was the first thing that made me think "Hmm. maybe I can do this whole fanfiction thing too." I'll leave the decision of whether I was successful or not to you.

Without Asleep, this wouldn't be here. So, I wanted to give credit where credit was due in some small way. If you've read the story, you might get why Anna covering over one eye is significant. If you haven't: go read it! I'm not saying anything, and if you've enjoyed this then you'd probably enjoy Asleep way more than what I've written.

And, for the record: this is not official, or any sort of canon, or even cleared with the author, etc. If they were to tell me to change it and that they wanted nothing to do with my story, I'd change it (side note: if you are the author, hi! Please finish Asleep sometime this century! You're killing me. Not just because I want to know what's next, but also because everyone else has to pick up the slack you left for quality writing in this archive, and I can't do "quality"). It's just a subtle reference to the story that put me here now.

That brings me to another point, though:

Humor: One of the things I loved about Awakening was that it could be hilarious at times. The support conversations especially, looking back on them, were just plain amusing. In my opinion, Fates lost a bit of this in favor of a more serious tone, and though it still had quite a few lively moments, I think it lost a bit when it lost some of the humor that Awakening had. Some of the best stories I've seen here have managed to tap into that same sort of wit and humor, to great results. When I started writing, I wanted to try for the same. I like laughing, and I like thinking I made others laugh. Recently, though, there's been a lot of more serious stuff going on in the story. Now that we're back to the content that the game covers, I'm hoping I can make another attempt at capturing the same wit and humor the games had.

Anyway, that'll be it for now. If by some chance I don't post anything until after the holidays (and don't worry, I plan on writing during the holidays), then Happy Holidays!

Chapter 19:

Titles: Yes. The title is a Dungeons and Dragons pun. I couldn't come up with anything else clever.

Speaking of Mansions: The first section of this chapter is Nah's paralogue. Have you actually considered the location of that mission? It's some strange island on the exact opposite of the Ylissean continent from all the action. And it's some strange haunted mansion. What impetus would the Shepherds even have for being there in the first place? So, yeah, I may have implemented the whole rift gate thing just to allow the Shepherds a reason to be there. Frankly, that's been the running theme for the chapter before this, too. But at least I'm trying to come up with some sort of reasoning other than "there's an overworld map, I don't need to explain anything"...right? And yes, this part of the chapter takes place immediateky after the last, which is why it is all one section. The rest is about a week or two later.

Further Speaking of Mansions: I had what I might consider a stroke of inspiration in this. The mission takes place in the dark corridors of some strange mansion with magical walls. I took some artistic liberties and made the island it was on a small, barren rock. Many of the Shepherds with Robin are the sort that might be superstitious. So I relied heavily on the spooky haunted mansion aspect of the chapter. In game, the focus was more "kill the risen, recruit Nah," but we've all done that. And when I played that chapter, my underpreparation mean that it really was scary for me, albeit for different reasons. So the risen are zombies. The walls are ghosts. Nah showing up suddenly in a white dress is a momentary horror-esque surprise for Robin. And I hope it paid off.

Speaking of Manaketes: So Nah is in this chapter. I like Nah. I think she's an interesting character. Not ridiculously over the top, laugh-out-loud funny, or incredibly deep, but she's sort of...balanced? so I have a soft spot for her. And a manakete with aptitude becomes dangerous quickly, so I used her frequently in-game. In the future, expect more puns about her name. I apologize in advance.

Rise of the Snark: Something I always intended but don't know if I properly conveyed is that Shione is a bit sarcastic. He's supposed to be quick with a quip or barb. But I don't know if that's been properly conveyed to this point. So, of course, I needed a way to get this across. And what better way than to face him off against the most well-known sarcastic character in Awakening, someone who is alternately loved and hated for her attitude? So, yes, of course Shione wind's up talking to Severa a bit.

The Mage with the Big Hat: Laurent, surprisingly is also here. But this one requires a bit more explaining than the others, because he is not involved in any mission and already knows quite a bit more than anyone else, including who our cast of characters actually are. There is a reason for this. Partially, it's to avoid the same problem I had with Nah, specifically that his chapter is on the other side of the map from anything important. But more importantly, it provides some background on our characters. There's a reason why Aiden traveled to this specific time, and that reason is he's been here before. Years ago, when Laurent first traveled here, so did the five, before they had their falling-apart. This was, in fact, the first field test of the dimensional tome. I may go into the actual story itself as some sort of side chapter at a later date, but suffice to say that they met previously and couldn't really hide anything from Laurent, and so he is actually aware of the story behind Martin and the others.

Chapter 20:

Rambling on About Tactics: There was a bit of a wall of text at one point, thanks to Martin giving what was essentially a lecture on tactics. I promise, this was not just for the sake of exposition. In reality, this is my answer to how the Shepherds manage to stay alive.

When you think about it, the fact that the Shepherds are still alive is sort of odd. They regularly face nations with armies that vastly outnumber them, but it’s possible for a player to complete the game without losing one. Obviously, this is partly due to gameplay, but that’s not all. For a while, I just assumed that the Shepherds succeeded because they were highly skilled and never faced an entire Valmese army at once. Recently, though, I heard something that helped to clarify the situation. Have you ever heard the story of David and Goliath? I haven’t, but it’s a bit of a cultural touchstone, so I at least understood the premise. I then read a piece of a book that discussed the situation in more detail, and then helped me to realize why it was that the characters of Fire Emblem were so successful.

For the uninitiated, David and Goliath is a classical underdog story. Two ancient armies are at war, with (I believe, if I recall correctly) the Israelites being surrounded by their foe. The opposing army sends out a champion, a massive man named Goliath (see how that word came to be defined?), to challenge the Israelites to single combat. The rules were simple. The Israelites would send out their own warrior, the two would fight to the death, and the victorious side would take the other side as slaves. Now, Goliath was a massive, heavily armed warrior clad in the best bronze equipment and armed with lethal melee weaponry of the ancient era. No one would face him. No one until a shepherd named David stepped up. This shepherd approached Goliath, earning scorn from Goliath and his faction and fear from David’s own. Then David took a stone from his pouch, used his shepherd’s crook and a piece of cloth to propel the stone into Goliath’s exposed forehead, and knocks Goliath unconscious before killing him.

The reality of the story is somewhat more nuanced than the simple underdog story that is always told, however. David has experience with slinging stones, as he apparently tells his king that he will kill Goliath in the same way he has killed lions and bears. And his weaponry is not unconventional- slingers were a common type of projectile infantry I the ancient warfare, some of whom were said to be able to hit targets the size of a quarter from range, and who modern physics testing has revealed could hurl a stone using their slings with force equivalent to the bullet fired from a mid-sized handgun. With that in mind, David’s victory is suddenly very sensible. In fact, the real world ancient battlefield had a weapon triangle of sorts, where projectile infantry could kill slower and more armored melee infantry before they could get close, melee infantry could kill cavalry by withstanding their charge and getting close, and cavalry could kill projectile infantry before the projectile infantry could hit the fast moving cavalry. David, as projectile infantry, was almost assured victory against Goliath, the melee infantry.

Goliath went into that challenge expecting another melee infantry fighter to challenge him. That was, after all, the way single combat had worked in history all through that point. David, however, with no stake in historical tradition and who had no alternative were he to try melee combat, won because he changed the rules of single combat, relying on the ancient world’s weapon triangle instead of personal skill on an even playing field. Golaith, who couldn’t have seen this coming (It’s also possible that Goliath was so large because of a disease that affects the pituitary and can put pressure on the eyes, meaning that he literally might not have been able to see David from afar), lost because the rules were changed against him. And since I’ve basically summarized the first few chapters, the book I encountered this idea in was called, fittingly enough David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s good.

Back to the point, Robin and the Shepherds are the David of the Fire Emblem world. They’re the underdogs, fighting the theocracy of Plegia and the armies of Valm with just a handful of troops, alongside but never directly with the armies of Regna Ferox. They’d be crushed in a stand up fight. So Robin does the only thing he can: the unexpected and impossible. He changes the rules of engagement, especially in Valm. No one would think a tactician would sacrifice half a fleet of a thousand ships in a naval engagement. No one would pick a fight in a supposedly demon-infested volcano, but Robin does just that when confronting Yen’fay. In fact, he spends most of his time in Valm completely avoiding Walhart’s main armies, picking fights only when he has every advantage and can change the rules of engagement. And that is how the Shepherds can continuously beat the odds.

I may have just written another wall of text on this subject. Sorry.

Naval Action: I remember that in my author’s notes for one of the first chapters, I compared a bar brawl to a scene from the game Assassin’s Creed IV, and said that there’d probably be some pirating on Aiden’s part once this chapter rolled around, as his physical design reminded me of the main character in said game.…well, that was a long time ago, and I have subsequently remembered that he gets seasick. So, that didn’t happen. Instead, Lucina and Yarne got to do a bit of swashbuckling, swinging from riggings to board an enemy vessel at the behest of Vaike. As for why Yarne was there in the first place, well, I have an explanation, but that’s because I know where his character arc is heading.

Hmm…now that I think about it, I really don’t have much else to say about this chapter. It’s either self-explanatory or rooted in events to come. Oh well. Next chapter, we head to the land of cherry blossoms itself, Chon’sin…okay, so technically Valm, and there aren’t any cherry blossoms, but…I might have to rethink my working title for this next chapter.

Chapter 21:

Ground to Cover:I've got a fair amount to say about this chapter, and it's getting late where I am. I might have to shut this off and come back tomorrow, so be aware that this could end without covering everything I wanted to cover if you're reading this the day the chapter was posted. There was also some stuff covered in the post-chapter note, so read that if you're interested, or take a look at the bonus after the note. Not that that's related, but I want people to know it exists.

The Resistance: You may have noticed that Say'ri has friends. Well, I introduced them a few chapters back, and decided they should accompany her through this chapter. After all, I know she's had trouble rallying others to her cause, but I'd think she has had at least some success, certainly enough that she wouldn't be totally alone when she finds the Shepherds at her door. If it bothers you, then think that their continued survival is a result of Aiden's interference with Valmese activity and the shipyard sabotage over the two year interlude, preventing a more concentrated effort against the princess and causing a success against the empire that didn't occur in game.

The Prison: This Plegian prison is the same one as where the Pegasus knights were kept during the rescue so many chapters ago. The inhabitants, though, are far more dangerous. This results in a sort of standoff between the prisoners and the warden, since both are essentially powerless against each other.

There be Dragons: You might have noticed that manaketes featured in this chapter somewhat heavily, and I don't just mean the revelation about you-know-who. Well, just as Yarne highlighted the presence of Taguel for a chapter or two, Nah has featured somewhat. As for her extreme danger to enemy forces, that was me expressing my gameplay experience. In Awakening, I got Nah fairly early on (the recruitment chapter was a slog I was unprepared for but succeeded in eventually). Her stats and skills (especially with Donnel as a dad) eventually made her the medieval equivalent of a tactical nuke on the field. Really tough, with a powerful attack that hit at any range. And she had galeforce and armsthrift for her dragonstone, with a number of other useful skills and support from other good characters. Stats haven't been the driving factor behind the game, but I wanted to throw this particular experience of mine in, anyway. Dragons, FYI, remained important in the next Fire Emblem games I played, too. Corrin, obviously, is the main character and as such gets all the best stuff, even if dragonstones themselves have been balanced. Then in Heroes my first ever summoning gave me a five-star young Tiki who has remained a staple of my team (and cuts through Hector like he's made of butter), while my second session ever gave me a five-star Fae (who is very useful, but I had to ditch one of them because the number of Falchions in Arena meant that two manaketes on a team was a bad idea. I still swap her in when I'm not using Tiki, though).

What's Next In Valm: As was alluded to, the characters in Valm won't be going straight to the Mila tree, in order to avoid direct engagement with Walhart's legions. they're going the scenic route, and who knows who they might meet along the way. By the time we reach the Mila tree, I expect Echoes: Shadows of Valentia to be out, which might be helpful to me in fleshing out background info, since Mila is a character/god in that and I never played Gaiden.

Watch That First Step: As I've made clear before, I find the Grimleal's motives intriguing. I've tried to explore it a bit more, understand why the cult is not just accepting annihilation but actually encouraging it, and the answers I always got trying to see things from their perspective were either "suicidal", "expecting rewards in the afterlife", or "bad writing". The first two didn't seem likely to me, and the third wouldn't be practical to write about. Eventually I hit on the importance of truth to the cult (in other FE games dark magic might be viewed as a path to knowledge, the spell "Grima's Truth"). I thought that, perhaps, they see Grima's coming as inevitable, the ultimate truth of annihilation. it would be useless to defy it, sure. But, it would also be dishonest to try and resist or ignore it. They follow what they see as the truth, and think that others are lying to themselves.

The execution method used on Emmeryn is an extension of this. Gravity is an absolute, a truth. Some might try to deny it, but they cannot fight it. Martin's flight, then, takes on significance as a successful denial of this death by a supposed "truth". As for the manakete himself, I've said all I want to say for now in the chapter itself.

The "New World" Part of the Title: I've explained already why plot elements from Fates are being included, but here's how the idea came to be in the first place.

When I originally envisioned this plot, Fates wasn't even something I had heard of. When I first saw it, I thought of it as nothing more than a cool new game to watch out for. As I learned more about the plot, though, things changed. Prior to this point, the Plegia arc Martin and Lyta were part of had severe pacing and characterization issues, and it eventually occurred to me that what I now have planned could be the perfect fit. This also serves to solidify some other topics I wanted to bring out, along with quite a few other bonuses that will materialize as the story continues.

That will be all for now, folks. I'll see you real soon.

Chapter 22:

I said these notes would be up the day the chapter was posted. I was wrong. That's what happens when a combination of work and bad headaches take you out of commission for a bit, my apologies. Anyway, they're up now.

Not Awakening: As of this chapter, we start getting really into the whole "Fates" thing. I am aware that some people really do not like this game, and they have some valid criticisms about it. The same could also be said about Awakening, however, and I think the people who would be really offended by any mention of Fates would likely not be the same people reading an obscure Awakening fanfic. Though I don't plan on making Fates as integral to the plot of Awakening, I do see this story as a chance to look at and try to understand or adjust some of the odd things about Fates, too.

As for why I'm using Fates in the first place, I've explained (vaguely) already. But I'll get to more of that in a second.

Also Not Awakening: In contrast to the new, divisive Fire Emblem game, we have recently had the release of Echoes, a revamped old and very good game that a lot of people like. As I have alluded to, I intend to use it as background for events in Valm, rather than anything lime I'm doing with Fates. This is in part because the events of Gaiden/Echoes are already integral to the events of Awakening, even more so in Echoes than Gaiden, and so revisiting it, rather than simply referencing it and adjusting current events to make sense with it, would not actually serve any purpose.

However,both Fates and Echoes do share a commonality that has been true of all of my personal experience with the franchise, starting with Awakening. There is a heavy emphasis on a backstory involving ancient dragon-gods and insanity or war with humans or what have you. Awakening had Naga and Grima, Fates had Anankos, and now in Echoes Duma and Mila have been altered from gods to exalted divine dragons (this includes the pile of sludge that was the end-game boss changing into a dragon, as well), fulfilling a similar role in both the game's mythos and in the storyline as Naga, especially considering they were of the same tribe at one point. Also in Echoes (SPOILERS FOR POSTGAME CONTENT, WHICH IS NEW TO ECHOES AND NOT IN GAIDEN, HENCE THE SPOILER WARNING!) we finally get some real information about Grima, namely that he was created by an alchemist from the blood of divine dragon and as such is not like any of the natural dragons in the Archanean series so far (also, the game finally taught me how to spell that properly), and that the Risen are dead corpses controlled by a beetle that creates a mask-like cocoon on the host, or something along those lines. Considering that apparently Thabes is also the final resting place of Naga, this is some interesting info...

Anyways, the games have always had this sort of backstory from what I understand, but in the recent titles it seems to be really being brought to the front and center. I started this story a long time ago, and at that point didn't honestly have more than a vague idea of where it would end up. Fates wasn't something I knew about, if it had even been announced. Echoes wasn't even close to the horizon. This story has evolved, I like to think, with new information and with me actually getting closer to the end and needing to think about specifics. As such, it has come to incorporate more and more this whole "deteriorating dragon-gods" background that the games seem to be focusing on. There was always some element of it (after all, Awakening included it and I had no working knowledge of any title besides Awakening when I started writing), but it's more prominent now in the plot structure.

Bad News for the Tactician: Now, consider all of the above. Consider, also, that we have a character who was recently revealed to be a manakete, and who this very chapter explained his fear of degeneration and such. Martin's character arc was a very early part of this story, and in truth it hasn't actually changed much. What has changed is the context it takes place within (degeneration and dragon-gods are now a major part of the series' plotline) and how the arc progresses. Instead of the character simply looking to something like Grima and not wanting to be that (as was the original idea and why he didn't use his abilities) he now has a fairly justifiable concern about this looming, all-encompassing threat that seems to keep popping up again and again. He now is also forced to confront this reality head on in a way that didn't really happen in the original idea I had through the Fates story, which involves a central protagonist who is a dragon/manakete and a central antagonist who is degenerating. And that is one of many reasons why I've incorporated Fates. Because suddenly, it's story is very relevant to the tale I'm trying to tell in multiple ways. But that's all I can say for now without spoiling things.

The rest of these notes are going to be more relevant to specific events in the chapter, I promise.

Some News from the Mage: I mentioned at the end of this chapter that the events in Valm were inspired heavily by Echoes. They wouldn't exist had I not played that game. But more than just incorporating that game into this story in what I hope is an interesting way, this has allowed me to do more stuff with Cera, the Grimleal mage who I always intended to be at least a somewhat-relevant character but who hasn't really gotten the opportunity or screentime to be that. We get to find out what happened to her and the others from their own point of view, rather than after-the-fact knowledge. She gets to sort of develop her character further without being surrounded by other characters who I also want to develop. And she gets to interact with some pretty cool/terrifying stuff.

She has always been, in my mind, a very pious character. Unlike many of the other characters I have made that serve as protagonists to one extent or another, she is very spiritual. She is devoted to her god, and her belief that said being is in fact a god and worthy of worship and reverence. And it isn't that Grima is the one true god and master to her, but that all these beings, who (despite what we find out about them in the endgame) it should be noted are widely worshipped as truly divine and all powerful by the majority of people (likely including the Ylissean Royal family before they found out otherwise) in this universe, are in fact divine and powerful to her. This piety is something that definitely exists in the universe, and I'm not so certain I've adequately represented that outside the Grimleal specifically, and I should (even if I played the game and therefore know the truth). With Cera's piety to Grima comes a loyalty to the Grimleal, not just through faith but because of the strong familial connection she feels towards the group that essentially raised her. It might even be said that her faith is secondary in terms of her loyalty, and that faith was more likely inspired by proximity to the Grimleal, not vice-versa. As such, though she is a believer, she is not always acting purely in the interest of her faith (ie, letting Aiden live).

But in order to let her develop, I had to sort of back off on her new companions. Ephist, Noso, and Mathias aren't going to undergo their own life-changing discoveries or really develop as characters. Their primary role is to be scholars, as referenced by their names (which are, in accordance to my theme that I stole from Phila, derived from greek words meaning things like knowledge or learning). So that's what's going on with them (in short, not too much.) This isn't to say that I want them to be flat, uninteresting cardboard characters, but they aren't major characters by any stretch of the imagination. Keeping with the Echoes theme, I actually had Boey and Mae in mind when writing Noso and Mathias, just a bit. Ephist is something else, though. Maybe like an evil Miriel or something?

Bad News for the Queen: Jumping back to Fates, we deal with the assassination. Say what you will about the game, but I thought that cutscene at the beginning of chapter 5 was impactful. Mikoto's voice/model weren't totally aligned and slightly jarring for the unprepared me, but that was forgotten with the rest of that scene. The rage and fury the avatar feels, followed by a mission where you can't even control them...the whole chapter seemed to work for me. As such, I tried to really capture that cutscene's essence, but also describe it from the view of a character who's stuck in the middle of it rather than the watcher outside the 3DS system.

Now, I imagine that some people might be wondering why, already, Martin and Lyta seem to be integrated with the Hoshidans. I already did that with the Ylisseans (although that's because they're secretly family), so why not try something else? All I have to say is, you'll see. Other than that, though, I don't have too much to say about the events here.

The Gods' Return: Perhaps because I'm still thinking about it, I'm really excited to keep talking about Echoes. You may be wondering how it is that Duma, or what appears to be Duma, talked to Cera in this chapter. After all, isn't he dead? sealed by Falchion? Mila too, right?

Well, as we find out in the postgame (SPOILERS), so is Grima. and yet, Grima returns. Who's to say that he's the only one? Maybe without a Fire Emblem, just a Falchion isn't enough to seal away a dragon god fully. As for why they might not have made their presence known, unlike Grima, well, they actually seemed content to pass on to memory and myth. It might not have been Duma or Mila's original plan, but once Alm came along, they seemed willing enough to let the mortals have a chance at the wheel, so why would they try to change things? So instead they remain dormant.

Well, I'm about written out for now and I can't think of anything else I want to or can say, so that's all for now. If you'll excuse me, I have to plan a chapter for the other story I'm working on.